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I wish there is a page that can guide newbie how to install the RTL-Airband to work on Any Pi (Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Nano Pi, Banana Pi etc) with step by step guide. How to configure the frequency with how many USB RTL Dongle to be used. I tried to install the RTL-SDR Airband and at last nothing success, always have error on this and that.
I really hope that author or the experts can write it down step by step for us to try on this.
Thank you & Regards.

#**To test your scanned frequencies with waterfall look. If star is shown in front of the frequency means airband signal is received.

Step 7. ( To run auto after boot)

Starting RTLSDR-Airband on system boot
If you wish to start the program automatically at boot, you can use example startup scripts from init.d subdirectory in the source tree. These scripts assume default installation paths (ie. the program in /usr/local/bin/rtl_airband and the config in /usr/local/etc/rtl_airband.conf).

Debian / Raspbian Jessie or newer
(or any other distribution based on systemd):

I think part of the problem is that librtlsdr-dev doesn’t exist?? Today I made a fresh installation and configured the wifi etc so it is very basic. After spending some time reading through threads it appears that many people recommend starting out with a FRESH installation. It seems that if one balks an installation attempt of the SDR packages (rtl_airband or rtl_fm, etc.), it makes it very difficult to clean up the mess.
Here is what I get when trying to follow your July 19th comment: (note the bottom line)

Okay I installed Buster. This is where I am at now, when I try Step 6 I get this:

/usr/local/bin/rtl_airband -f
Illegal instruction

I have sifted through the .conf and cannot see any problems:

# Scanning mode example
# Single dongle, three frequencies, output to Icecast server and to a file.
# Settings are described in reference.conf
# Refer to https://github.com/szpajder/RTLSDR-Airband/wiki
# for description of keywords and config syntax.

Update, I have it working. When I went to set the center frequency towards something closer to the average of my selected frequencies it’d bomb out. I’m at 2 currently and working my way back up. I don’t know if the Pi can’t actually handle 8 frequencies, or if my range of frequencies was too great. I’ll keep experimenting with this.

The major downside for me is each channel has to be it’s own stream, which makes it a bit useless as a scanner. There might be a way to do this server side, but there doesn’t look to be anything built in by default other than a failover option.

I’m getting very close to getting this working (I think) so I’ll share what I’ve done.

First, I have the dongle running on a raspberry pi. The instructions given for that were fine. You will need to edit config.txt in /home/pi/RTLSDR-Airband-master as follows.
Line 1 lists the number of dongles you’re using. (probably 1)
Line 2, first number is the dongle number, starting from 0. The second number is the number of channels defined to scan, up to 8. The third number is the bitrate I think. Fourth number is the center frequency or something to that effect. I’m not sure what it does. Fifth number I really don’t remember, I just left it default for now.
Line 3 begins your streams. If you are running an icecast2 server on linux.. (maybe others but this what worked for me) First is your destination icecast server. I put my test server’s name in (it’s already in /etc/hosts).

After the server name is the port. Default is 8000. Next is the stream name. It doesn’t crash if you put the same name for each stream which is what I’d think you’d do to listen to them all at once. After that is the frequency you want to listen to. Next is the username and password for your server’s SOURCE connections. Default I think is source and password.
With that saved, start up rtl_airband. You should get a console screen of numbers.
Now it’s time to get your icecast2 server configured..
I found my icecast.xml in /etc/icecast2.
You can also bring up the admin console with http://:8000/admin/stats.xsl
If your icecast and raspberry pi config’s match, you should see 1 source, and a mount point. At this point, you should be able to bring up a webpage to http://:8000/ (or whatever you named your stream in your config.txt)

And that’s where I’m at. I don’t have any sound yet and I haven’t seen any astericks in the rtl_sdr window which I’m guessing is a lock or receive flag.

I managed to build this on RasPi, but nothing seems to work. I’ve tried several different servers (icecast/2, Shoutcast, windows and linux) but was not able to connect even all the config files seems to be OK and other streamers connect without any problems.

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What is RTL-SDR

The RTL-SDR is an ultra cheap software defined radio based on DVB-T TV tuners with RTL2832U chips. The RTL-SDR can be used as a wide band radio scanner. It may interest ham radio enthusiasts, hardware hackers, tinkerers and anyone interested in RF.